Need some proof that homeschooling is a perfectly valid form of education and won’t ruin your child’s chances at a successful future? Here are some examples of the many successes that homeschoolers can attain.
(Let us know of any others we’ve missed in our list!)
U.S. Presidents
- John Adams
- John Quincy Adams
- Grover Cleveland
- James Garfield
- William Henry Harrison
- Andrew Jackson
- Thomas Jefferson
- Abraham Lincoln
- James Madison
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- Theodore Roosevelt
- John Tyler
- George Washington
- Woodrow Wilson
Statesmen
- Konrad Adenauer
- Henry Fountain Ashurst
- William Jennings Bryan
- Winston Churchill
- Henry Clay
- Pierre du Pont
- Benjamin Franklin
- Alexander Hamilton
- Patrick Henry
- William Penn
- Daniel Webster
Military Leaders
- Alexander the Great – Greek Ruler
- John Barry – Senior Navy Officer
- Stonewall Jackson – Civil War General
- John Paul Jones – Father of the American Navy
- Robert E. Lee – Civil War General
- Douglas MacArthur – U.S. General
- George Patton – U.S. General
- Matthew Perry – naval officer who opened up trade with Japan
- John Pershing – U.S. General
- David Dixon Porter – Civil War Admiral
Scientists
- George Washington Carver
- Pierre Curie
- Albert Einstein
- Michael Faraday
- Oliver Heaviside
- T.H. Huxley
- Blaise Pascal
- Booker T. Washington
- Erik Demaine
Artists
- William Blake
- John Singleton Copley
- Claude Monet
- Grandma Moses
- Charles Peale
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Andrew Wyeth
- Jamie Wyeth
Inventors
- Alexander Graham Bell – invented the telephone
- John Moses Browning – firearms inventor and designer
- Peter Cooper – invented skyscraper, built first U.S. commercial locomotive
- Thomas Edison – invented the stock ticker, mimeograph, phonograph, and perfected the electric light bulb
- Benjamin Franklin – invented the lightning rod
- Elias Howe – invented sewing machine
- William Lear – airplane creator
- Cyrus McCormick – invented grain reaper
- Guglielmo Marconi – developed radio
- Eli Whitney – invented the cotton gin
- Sir Frank Whittle – invented turbo jet engine
- Orville and Wilbur Wright – built the first successful airplane
Composers
- Irving Berlin
- Anton Bruckner
- Noel Coward
- Felix Mendelssohn
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Francis Poulenc
- John Philip Sousa
Writers
- Hans Christian Anderson
- Margaret Atwood
- Pearl S. Buck
- William F. Buckley, Jr.
- Willa Cather
- Agatha Christie
- Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
- Charles Dickens
- Robert Frost
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- Alex Haley
- Brett Harte
- L. Ron Hubbard
- C.S. Lewis
- Amy Lowell
- Gabriela Mistral
- Sean O’Casey
- Christopher Paolini
- Isabel Paterson
- Beatrix Potter
- Carl Sandburg
- George Bernard Shaw
- Mattie J. T. Stepanek
- Mercy Warren
- Phillis Wheatley
- Walt Whitman
- Laura Ingalls Wilder
Educators
- Amos Bronson Alcott – innovative teacher, father of Louisa May Alcott
- Catharine Beecher – co-founder of the Hartford Female Seminary
- Jill Ker Conway – first woman president of Smith College
- Timothy Dwight – President of Yale University
- William Samuel Johnson – President of Columbia College
- Horace Mann – “Father of the American Common School”
- Charlotte Mason – Founder of Charlotte Mason College of Education
- Fred Terman – President of Stanford University
- Frank Vandiver – President of Texas A&M University
- Booker T. Washington – Founder of Tuskegee Institute
- John Witherspoon – President of Princeton University
Performing Artists
- Christina Aguilera
- Louis Armstrong
- Barlow Girl
- Justin Bieber (distance schooling)
- Charlie Chaplin
- Jacob Clemente
- Misty Copeland
- Miley Cyrus
- Hilary Duff
- Billie Eilish
- Dakota Fanning
- Taylor Gladstone
- Selena Gomez
- Whoopi Goldberg
- Ryan Gosling
- Hanson
- Jennifer Love Hewitt
- Jonas Brothers
- Demi Lovato
- Yehudi Menuhin
- Moffatts
- Frankie Muniz
- Daniel Radcliffe (on-set tutoring)
- LeAnne Rimes
- Jaden Smith
- Willow Smith
- Britney Spears
- Hailee Steinfeld
- Taylor Swift
- Justin Timberlake
- Emma Watson (on-set tutoring)
- Michelle Williams
Business Entrepreneurs
- Andrew Carnegie – wealthy steel industrialist
- Amadeo Giannini – Bank of America’s founder
- Horace Greeley – New York Tribune founder
- Soichiro Honda – creator of the Honda automobile company
- Peter Kindersley – book illustrator and publisher
- Ray Kroc – founder of McDonald’s fast food restaurant chain
- Jimmy Lai – newspaper publisher; founder of Giordano International
- Dr. Orison Swett Marden – founder, Success magazine
- Adolph Ochs – New York Times founder
- Joseph Pulitzer – newspaper publisher; established Pulitzer Prize
- Colonel Harland Sanders – started Kentucky Fried Chicken
- Dave Thomas – founder of the Wendy’s restaurant chain
- Mariah Witcher – founder of Mariah’s Famous Cookies
- Daniel Mills – founder of Salem Ridge Press
Athletes
- Jamie Anderson
- Simone Biles
- Lia Del Priore
- Blake Griffin
- Bethany Hamilton
- Sage Kotsenburg
- Joey Logano
- Tamara McKinney
- Bode Miller
- Jim Ryan
- Maria Sharapova
- Balaram Stack
- Jason Taylor
- Tim Tebow
- Venus and Serena Williams
- Shaun White
Others
- Abigail Adams – Wife of John Adams; mother of John Quincy Adams
- Ansel Adams – Photographer
- Susan B. Anthony – reformer and women’s rights leader
- John James Audubon – ornithologist and artist
- Clara Barton – Started the Red Cross
- Elizabeth Blackwell – first woman in the U.S. to receive a medical degree
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer – anti-Nazi German theologian
- John Burroughs – Naturalist
- George Rogers Clark – Explorer
- Davy Crockett – frontiersman
- Eric Hoffer – social philosopher
- Sam Houston – lawyer; first president of the Republic of Texas
- Charles Evans Hughes – jurist; Chief Justice
- Mary D. Leakey – fossil hunter; wife of Richard Leakey
- Harriet Martineau – first woman sociologist
- Margaret Mead – cultural anthropologist
- John Stuart Mill – Free-market Economist
- Charles Louis Montesquieu – Philosopher
- John Muir – naturalist
- Florence Nightingale – Nurse
- Sandra Day O’Connor – Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
- Sam Oosterhoff – youngest elected MPP in Ontario (at age 19)
- Thomas Paine – political writer during the American Revolution
- Bill Ridell – Newspaperman
- Will Rogers – Humorist
- Bertrand Russell – Logician
- Albert Schweitzer – Physician
- Sir Ernest Shackleton – Explorer
- Herbert Spencer – philosopher, sociologist
- Gloria Steinem – founder and long-time editor of Ms. magazine
- Mary Walker – Civil War physician; recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor
- Lester Frank Ward – “Father of American Sociology”
- Martha Washington – wife of George Washington
- Frances E. C. Willard – educator, temperance leader, and suffragist
- Frank Lloyd Wright – Architect
- Elijah ben Solomon Zalman – Jewish scholar
Famous Homeschooling Parents
- Michael Card
- Robert Frost
- Paul Overstreet
- Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith
- John Travolta and Kelly Preston
- Lisa Whelchel
- Darrell Waltrip